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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

October, 2008

New Yorker Politics

One of the nice things about traveling as much as I have been is getting to read entire issues of the New Yorker (pretty much only possible if you're going to be sitting in one place for a number of hours). Last weeks politics issue was my favorite in quite some time. Beyond the endorsement of Obama which was hardly a surprise and just okay, there were three articles I liked quite a bit: "The Hardest Vote" looks at Ohio undecideds and is the best overview on the subject I've read. I have gotten quite annoyed at reading all the stuff that talks about the problems with the polls, because most articles only touch on one issue of polling and use that to suggest that it must be off. My big issue is that there are a million issues with polls and the article goes back and forth with them using real people as anecdotes. "World's Apart" compares McCain and Obama's stance on foreign policy, adding a nice amount of meat to each. Finally, my favorite article in the issue examined the history of voting, explaining that the secret ballot (and the ballot itself) is actually a relatively new invention.
October 18, 2008
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.